Herb Brooks stitching together St. Paul's East Side? Yep.

Hockey legend Herb Brooks grew up in the Payne-Phalen area of St. Paul's East Side, just a couple of blocks from where Ann Polachek now has a coffee shop, Polly's Coffee Cove.

At Johnson High School, Brooks was on the team that won the 1955 state high school hockey tournament; he played for and coached the University of Minnesota team. And at the 1980 Olympics, he coached the U.S. team to the gold medal after defeating the Soviet Union -- an upset commemorated by a statue of Brooks, both arms thrust into the air in victory, in St. Paul's Rice Park.

Through determination and perseverance, Brooks made his underdog team into a winner. Polachek says East Siders can look to his story as a pathway to create their own miracles in a part of St.

Ann Polachek, the owner of St. Paul East Side coffee shop Polly's Coffee Cove, is inviting everyone to a free showing of "Miracle" about East Side legend Herb Brook's hockey team which won the 1980 U.S. Olympic gold medal. Brooks used to go to this shop when it was a bakery. (Pioneer Press: Jean Pieri)

Paul that has seen its share of poverty and crime.

Polachek herself is no athlete, and, she says emphatically, "Hockey is not the point!" Her interest in his life lies in the way Brooks -- the last one cut from the 1960 U.S. Olympic team that went on to win a gold medal -- kept trying. She would like the East Side community to build a team, too -- to create a cohesive community in which people feel like they belong, even if they're from different ethnic and racial groups, in different economic situations and of different ages.

A 15-year Payne-Phalen resident, Polachek is chairwoman of the Great Neighborhood Gathering committee of St. Paul's District 5 Council. She wants to use her position to get people from all around the East Side to recognize and build on their strengths.

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A former high school teacher and paralegal as well as a businesswoman, Polachek is using Brooks' East Side background and stunning hockey victory as a metaphor to bring people together, figuratively and literally. That's why the District 5 Council is sponsoring a free showing of "Miracle," a movie about Brooks' 1980 team, on April 10 at the Plaza Theater in Maplewood.

For the past six years, since she opened her coffee shop, "my biggest joy here is the people," she said. "People come in and talk (and) I have the opportunity to see where things connect."

She also sees where they don't connect. A lot of people are in survival mode, she says, and "you're never going to get rid of the bad things." But she believes getting East Siders together just to say hello and do something as simple as watch a sports movie is a beginning. She says she may not understand the problems, interests and backgrounds of everyone in the East Side neighborhoods, but she respects them and wants to listen to them.

So she hopes people from all around the East Side will join her at the movie. After that, she hopes some of them are interested in working to build a stronger community. She's not sure exactly how, and she's looking for their help.